1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to sanitizing devices and systems, and in particular to an ozone sanitation device and system for washing, sanitizing, and re-hydrating various objects. The present invention is particularly adapted for use in the food products industry, wherein various food products, such as fruits and vegetables, may be sanitized using a more natural ozone solution.
2. Background of the Invention and Related Art
The existence of harmful pathogens on various products poses a serious health risk to consumers, particularly when these products are consumed or otherwise introduced into the body. For example, there is an acute awareness in the food products industry of the existence of bacteria, viruses, and other harmful pathogens that grow and seemingly thrive on the food products being sold. Likewise, the medical field is also greatly concerned that the tools and products they use are free from such pathogens.
With an emphasis on food products, the supermarket industry is concerned that food products contain large counts of pathogens. They want to decrease their liabilities to any or all consumer food borne illnesses and deaths by decreasing the pathogens on the products sold. However, they also want to try and maximize revenue.
Along with the selling of bulk produce, it has become popular in the supermarket industry to sell cut and prepared produce. Both cut and uncut products carry pathogens and need to be sanitized. Although both are potentially dangerous, the prepared produce has a greater need for bacteria reduction because it has been cut and more surface area of the produce is exposed to probable contamination.
The chilled food industry has seen many changes the past number of years. There are many more packaged chilled products available from salads to fresh salsas, fresh cut vegetables to fresh cut fruits, with fruit being offered only in limited supply due to the shortened shelf-life and microbial bacterial problems. As the industry moves to more source processing, the food contamination risks have increased. There are also temperature abuse problems that develop. Temperature abuse problems come as a result of improper cooling in a refrigerated truck trailer, product left out of refrigeration on either the shipping or receiving ends. Improper handling at the source supplier is also a factor.
Because of the varied problems, many retail grocers and restaurant chains have gone back and forth in sourcing ready to use packaged chilled products. When chilled packaged lettuce products were first introduced, it was assumed and believed that they could ship from processing plants located at the source to all market areas. This proved to be a false assumption and the processors were forced to build processing plants strategically located throughout the country. Many advances have been made in packaging and processing technologies. However, there remains a large number of products, mainly fresh cut fruits, that are still to difficult to manufacture at a source processing plant and distribute to a wide area.
Moreover, as there are significant microbial and bacteria problems in whole fruits and vegetables, many of the retail grocers and restaurant chains have mandated inspections and certifications of whole fruits and vegetables shipped to them from the source supplier. The Center for Disease Control estimates some 75 million food borne illnesses and over 5,000 deaths each year are attributed to food borne pathogens, of which fully 50 percent are related to fruit and produce items. Changing lifestyles and imported chilled food products have contributed to the rapid emergence of new food borne pathogens.
Prior art devices and systems designed to combat or reduce many of the above-described problems tend to be inefficient, ineffective, or too expensive, thus rendering them largely inadequate, impractical, and/or inept and severely deficient. Many prior art concepts utilize traditional methods of dealing with bacteria, viruses, and spoilage of food products. These traditional methods consist of some variant of hiring a team of individuals to scrub food by hand with a diluted chlorine wash or another anti-bacterial and anti-viral agent, remove and discard the spoiled sections of a particular food product, and continue to monitor the food product's rapid spoilage. Additionally, there was little that could be done about the dehydration and shrinkage that occurs when a food product suffers a depletion in its moisture content.
Some of the modern systems of dealing with bacteria and viruses on food products are effective, but are unattractive to end use consumers and do little or nothing to slow spoilage, and even destroy some of the nutritional value of the food product upon treatment. Specifically, irradiation of food products, often referred to as cold pasteurization, has proven adequate to sterilize, but does nothing to enhance or even preserve the food product's good looks, water weight, and flavor. Also, many other problems exist with irradiation, such as expense.
Accordingly, what is needed is a device and system that adequately combats the overgrowth of bacteria, viruses, and other harmful pathogens, as well as prevents spoilage, without sacrificing or resultantly reducing those things that are desired and beneficial in the food product. What is also needed is a simple method of treating food products and associated objects to obtain these advantages.